Palm Avenue businesses protest Thunder by the Bay closures

For the past two years, Doug Gourley has kept his Palm Avenue store, As Good As It Gets, open during Thunder by the Bay.

Despite the influx of visitors to the downtown area for the three-day motorcycle event, Gourley’s store isn’t going to be open again when Thunder by the Bay rolls around in January. He said his store only saw one type of visitor during that weekend — and they weren’t interested in making a purchase.

“We didn’t have a single customer in either of the past two years,” Gourley said. “We were basically just a public restroom.”

Although the City Commission declined to modify a moratorium on Main Street closures to remove an exception for Thunder by the Bay in September, a group of Palm Avenue merchants are still upset by the event’s impact on their block. At the Sept. 21 commission meeting, Gourley and Palm Avenue Merchant Association President Jerry King spoke about those adverse effects.

“I remember last year, when I was coming into work, I heard on a local radio station, ‘Do not come to downtown Sarasota — they’re having Thunder by the Bay,’” King said. “Well, that’s going to discourage a lot of shoppers.”

The city requires 66% of businesses to approve a street closure for a special event. Last year, 74% of the businesses approved Thunder by the Bay’s request, which allowed the city to close several downtown blocks over the weekend.

Just 54% of the merchants on Palm Avenue approved the closure, however. On South Palm Avenue specifically, only 44% of the businesses on the block agreed to the closure.

"I feel a little bit as though we’ve been gerrymandered against the wishes of the merchants on the street." — Doug Gourley

Given that breakdown, Gourley believes the street closure is being forced upon Palm Avenue businesses.

“I feel a little bit as though we’ve been gerrymandered against the wishes of the merchants on the street,” Gourley said. “It doesn’t matter what the Palm Avenue merchants think anymore.”

Toni Welicki, city administrative assistant event coordinator, said the city considers the overall balance of merchant response to ensure the special event closure area remains contiguous.

“You can’t have one block open and the next one closed,” Welicki said. “This is an old story with Palm Avenue that’s been going on for years and years.”

Although there is no sign that Palm Avenue merchants will be able to affect changes before the next Thunder by the Bay, they’re still trying to get the message out that the event hurts  business during a crucial part of the year.

“Yeah, it is just one day,” Gourley said. “But it’s a really important day, in season.”